Foreign aid and political influence of the development assistance committee countries

Abstract

This paper empirically examines whether voting coincidence in the United Nations General Assembly increases between donors and recipients after foreign aid is distributed. It extends previous literature by expanding the donor countries considered and by testing the long-run political influence of aid. The results show that Canada, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom exhibit a positive relationship between voting coincidence and aid distribution. The results also show a positive relationship between voting coincidence and aid for the United States, but only in the long run when the yearly panels are collapsed into three-year averages. The latter result may provide an explanation for why previous studies find mixed results as to whether the United States uses aid for political support. The results are robust to the inclusion of measures of economic power, military power, dependence on foreign support, and international trade patterns.
Keywords

Item Type:

MPRA Paper

Original Title:

Foreign aid and political influence of the development assistance committee countries

Language:

English

Keywords:

Official Development Assistance (ODA), UN General Assembly, voting coincidence

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